Big Think
- Posted on Wednesday September 18, 2024
Sara Imari Walker is a professor of physics at Arizona State University and the author of a new book Life as No One Knows It: The Physics of Life’s Emergence. As I wrote in my review of the book, I’m a big fan of Walker’s work (full disclosure, we have collaborated before on a paper and a proposal).
The subject of her work and the new book is what might be called the “Physics of Life.” This is different from biophysics, ... Continue Reading » - Posted on Wednesday September 18, 2024
How much of an influence can one single object in the Universe have? Until recently, we didn’t think it was all that much. Sure, individual objects can emit lots of things: photons of all wavelengths, neutrinos and antineutrinos of enormous energies, gravitational waves, and jets of energetic particles that can extend for thousands, hundreds of thousands, or maybe even millions of light-years. Collapsing massive stars can make core-collapse supernovae; merging neutron stars can make kilonovae; supermassive black holes can feed ... Continue Reading » - Posted on Wednesday September 18, 2024
There’s a lot riding on engaging emotionally with our jobs. Studies show that when organizations increase the number of engaged employees, they improve a whole host of outcomes including profitability, wellbeing, productivity, and customer loyalty.
Yet, despite 70 per cent of employees saying their sense of purpose comes from work, only 23 per cent of us are engaged in our work, over 40 per cent report experiencing “a lot of stress”, and low engagement costs the global economy 9 per cent ... Continue Reading » - Posted on Tuesday September 17, 2024
Under the dry, piercing heat of the Utah sun, Sasha Reed is growing plots of plants — and bacteria, lichen and fungi, too. But Reed is no farmer, and at first glance, her fields look to be mostly dirt. She’s an ecologist, and what she is growing is cryptobiotic soil.
Also called biocrust, cryptobiotic soil is a community of tiny, dirt-dwelling organisms that form a distinct crust on the top of soil in arid landscapes. These crusts are vital across Earth’s ... Continue Reading » - Posted on Tuesday September 17, 2024
Engineers assume that a mechanism designed by somebody for a purpose will betray that purpose by its nature. We can then “reverse engineer” it to discern the purpose that the designer had in mind.
Reverse engineering is the method by which scientific archaeologists reconstructed the purpose of the Antikythera mechanism, a mesh of cogwheels found in a sunken Greek ship dating from about 80 B.C. The intricate gearing was exposed by modern techniques such as X-ray tomography. Its original purpose has ... Continue Reading »
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